A blog to help inspire organized resistance to the ALP's ill-advised, counter-productive and potentially totalitarian plan to impose mandatory ISP-based filtering on all residential internet feeds by default. This is *not* about the filth they are trying to block. This is about the Orwellian mechanism they are building to do it.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

On the limitations of using content classification as a crime fighting technique

There are some key differences between the European filters and the proposed Australian filter.

First, the European filters are all currently voluntary. Second, the European filters all approach the problem of child abuse as an extension of law enforcement efforts. The approach for the Australian filter is quite different: it is trying to tackle child abuse as if it was a content classification problem.

Whereas the decision procedure for the European filter is: "is the material to be blocked illegal", the question for the Australian filter is: "has this material been refused classification by the body that assesses film and literature".

One would have thought that the European filters are at least tackling a criminal problem as a criminal problem. The Australian Government is attempting to tackle child abuse as a problem of good or bad taste.

The Porn Report

Highly (though not universally) recommended as a serious attempt to understand the role of pornography in contemporary Australian society, one which debunks much of the moral panic surrounding the subject.

Commenting Rules

I reserve the right to remove comments, especially anonymous comments, which attempt to argue the position that possession of child porn should be legal.
This is not my position, and I do not wish my blog to be associated with that position. If others wish to defend this position they are welcome to do so, but they can do it elsewhere, not here.
Where I delete such comments, I will leave a stub to indicate that this has occurred.